Review: Sunshine

Set in the near future, the Earth’s sun is dying out. A crew of a ship called the Icarus II is sent out with a mission to reignite it.

Sunshine’s directed by Danny Boyle of Trainspotting and 28 Days Later fame, and it’s amazing how diverse this guy is as a director. This isn’t a slow, plodding sci-fi, it picks up right when things get interesting. The story here has a few predictable bits of course, but it’s handled well.

It’s not an action movie per se, so don’t expect space battle stuff here. :) But it’s not the insomnia-curing Solaris either, not by far.

The dude from 28 Days in in this one as the crew’s physicist, and you’ll notice a lot of the actors are from other films. The acting’s pretty believable in terms of how the characters respond to their respective situations. No oscar worthy performances here, but that’s a good thing — those are usually so overblown it gives me space sickness.

Effects-wise, this movie’s gorgeous. I picked up the Blu-ray, and the picture practically jumps off the screen. The effects are gorgeous, and a fair part of that is the way Boyle styles his movie. If you’ve seen 28 Days Later you’ll know what i mean, he loves filming in high def and enjoys unconventional filming techniques.

Sci fi is a niche genre, and this doesn’t try to be any kind of maintream attempt. The story’s very approachable, there’s not a ton of technobabble, and the director’s approach to this kind of movie makes it very unique. Overall, me likey.

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6 thoughts on “Review: Sunshine”

excellent mate – been wondering about this one for a while now. Tried to get it out the other night with the gf. But she overruled me and got Dreamgirls instead. Suffice it to say that watching paint dry would have been a more enlightening experience.

I watched this last night with my flat mate and I have to admit I find a few things a bit unbelievable (ok dont shoot me cause I know its sci fi, suspension of disbelief and all that) but why would one person be allowed do do a course correction on there own and why would the computer allow damage to the space craft when later in the film it trys to stop them doing just that???

you could be right I maybe interpreted what it did wrong. But small inconsistences aside i did enjoy this. Even when my flat mate went and googled to find out if people without space suits can survive in space for any length of time. You can. :) Just not very long. obviously.

I liked the movie quite a bit. I caught it a couple months back. The thing that bothered me in addition to the points you guys made was that the survivor of the first ship, the killer guy seems to have no real purpose in the story. I felt that the failures could have been explained by some other means that that the character really didn’t advance the story at all. On the whole though the story was something new and that is something rare these days.

A conventional sci-fi would probably have taken a purely scientific reason for things going awry. I like the additional human element they had there with the psycho guy. I mean, it’s bad enough you’re in a ship in space right next to a ball of burning hydrogen, but now you’ve got a crazy person TRYING to mess around.

It added a random element, plus the whole “not everyone wants to see the world saved” thing was a different take.